True, From a Certain Point of View

Well, it's November. Which means two things. One, I forgot about October. Whoops. Two, it's NaNoWriMo.

So last we… spoke, I had a pile of tropes and character traits and plot elements. Well, now I have a vaguely steampunk treasure-hunting action adventure with a search for a mysterious treasure hidden by a long-gone secret society. I'm actually pretty excited for it.

At this point, I'm not quite 2,000 words in. Barely beginning. But I'm on the second chapter and I already have something I want to talk about: POV.

For the uninitiated, that's Point of View. There's a lot of options for POV. 1st person vs. 3rd person (and yes, also 2nd person, but that's rarely used). Single vs. multi. Omniscient vs. limited vs objective. I'm not going to get into all the details of all the different kinds. Suffice it to say it's a matter of who we are following through the story, and how close we're following them.

Looking back at my list of past projects, I can see that I mostly use single POV (because that's totally a thing I keep track of, like the giant nerd I am). Sometimes 1st person, sometimes 3rd, but only following one character around. My experience with multi-POV (that is, following several characters around and switching between them) has been a bit… dicey. Like, most of the story might be from one point of view, but then it switches to another for a bit, and then back. Or, out of six main characters, we were following three, until they converged and we sort of followed them all as a unit, and then suddenly we broke off with a fourth character…

Point is, I don't think I've ever utilized multi-POV to its fullest potential. Until now.

This story has a 3rd person dual-POV. We follow a pair of siblings. She's a history professor and an upstanding citizen. He's a habitual screw-up and petty criminal. And the difference in how they view themselves and how they view each other is shaping up to be something wonderful.

Something I did is that when we're following her, she's referred to by a nickname in the narrative. It's the name she uses in her everyday life. But when we're following him, she's referred to by her full first name. I didn't really plan to do this, I just kind of did it when I started the second chapter. And then it felt like the right thing to do, because I think it highlights this emotional distance between them. I'm pretty proud of this little thing, because it feels like a Writer^TM thing to do.

Anyway, it's only Day 2 of NaNo, so I have a lot of writing to do.

I'll see you next time.